About me

This blogname was derived from the novel The Secret Life Of Saeed The Pessoptimist by the Palestinian Israeli Emile Habiby: absurdism as weapon against the (ir)realities of daily life in Palestine/Israel. (The subtitle is from a book by Dutch author Renate Rubinstein. It could as well be my motto).
My real name is Martin (Maarten Jan) Hijmans. I've been covering the ME since 1977 and have been a correspondent in Cairo. I started my 'Abu Pessoptimist' blog in January 2009 out of anger during the onslaught in Gaza. The other one, The Pessoptmist, is meant to be a sister version in English. (En voor de Nederlandstaligen: ik wilde in november 2009 een tweede blog in het Engels beginnen en ontdekte te laat dat als je één account hebt, een profiel dan meteen ook voor allebei de blogs geldt. Vandaar dat het nu ineens in het Engels is... So sorry.)

Monday, April 17, 2017

Erdoğan wins narrow victory in referendum for sweeping powers

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan,
has achieved a narrow victory in a historic referendum on a package of
constitutional amendments that will grant him sweeping new powers.
Sadi Güven, the head of Turkey’s high electoral board (YSK),
confirmed the passage of the referendum on Sunday night, based on unofficial results.
The yes campaign won 1.25m more votes than the no campaign, with only
about 600,000 votes still to be counted, Güven told reporters in
Ankara, meaning the expanded presidential powers had been approved.
However, disparities persisted into Sunday evening, with the
opposition saying not all ballots had been counted and they would
contest a third of the votes that had been cast.
Güven said the YSK had decided to consider unstamped ballots as valid
unless they were proved to be fraudulent, after a high number of
complaints – including one from the ruling Justice and Development party
(AKP) – that its officials had failed to stamp some ballot papers.
The no campaign said the YSK’s last-minute decision raised questions
about the validity of the vote. But Güven said the decision was taken
before results were entered into the system and that members of the AKP
and the main opposition were present at almost all polling stations and
signed off on reports. He said official results were expected in 11-12
days.The result of the referendum sets the stage for a transformation of
the upper echelons of the state and changing the country from a
parliamentary democracy to a presidential republic, arguably the most
important development in the country’s history since it was founded on
the ashes of the Ottoman Republic. The result gives the president to be elected in 2019 new
powers to appoint vice-presidents, ministers, high-level officials, and
senior judges. It will also allow the president to dissolve parliament, issue executive decrees, and impose states of emergency.
Erdoğan said he would immediately discuss reinstating the death
penalty in talks with the prime minister and the nationalist opposition
leader, Devlet Bahçeli. The president said he would take the issue to
referendum if necessary.
Results carried by the state-run Anadolu news agency showed the yes
vote had about51.3% compared with 48.7% for the no vote, with nearly 99% of the vote counted. Turnout exceeded 80%.
The country’s three largest cities – Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir –
voted against the changes, and so did the vast majority of Kurdish
voters and many of the coastal cities, indicating a general decline in
the ruling party’s support.
The vote caps two months of campaigning that has further polarised a
divided country still reeling from a coup attempt in which 265 people
were killed and hundreds injured, frequent terror attacks and the impact
of the ongoing civil war in neighbouring Syria.
The campaign refocused attention on government abuses in the
aftermath of the coup, including a purge that has gone far beyond those
who backed the putsch to target those who oppose the president’s
policies. Tens of thousands of academics, judges and members of the
security forces have been dismissed and top opposition politicians and
dozens of journalists have been arrested.
Turkey has drifted away from its western allies, from a candidate for
European Union membership in Erdoğan’s early years to a state of open
hostility with the bloc now. EU leaders accuse the Turkish president of
clamping down on freedoms, while he calls them “Nazi remnants” and
“fascists” who have been morally compromised by their treatment of
Turkey and Syrian refugees.